The access to justice debate has traditionally been founded on key notions of legality and legitimacy, in particular, the rule of law and equality. The idea of equal application of law has a rich pedigree and equal access to justice has been a clarion call for progressive lawyers and legal pressure groups alike. As Cappelletti and Garth observe, ‘the possession of rights is meaningless without mechanisms for their effective vindication.’ Yet, in spite of this, the ‘equal access for all’ agenda has come under increasing strain. As Paterson and Goriely have shown, the tensions within the equality of access agenda are partly conceptual. There are differences between those who advocate minimal rights to ensure some level of access and those who claim equality should be absolute. There are also questions over the utility of rights of access to justice, centred upon the ability of lawyers and legal processes to deliver substantial benefits to the poor. Inequalities are economic, social, and political and the capacity of legal aid programmes to redress them is limited. As Abel puts it, legal aid is one of the ‘limited redistributions [that] also legitimates a system that consistently betrays its promises.’ These scholarly tensions and concerns have been heavily underlined by a direct challenge to the level of state spending on legal and related advice services across Western societies. This has led to a growing interest in measures which enable greater control over expenditure, but also a wider ideological challenge to the desirability of such funding, and the utility of